Year: 2009

This moron who ran a red light and killed somebody:

Some communities began installing cool-burning LEDs more than a decade ago, and it wasn’t long before drivers started complaining about the problem.

Illinois authorities said that during a storm in April, 34-year-old Lisa Richter could see she had a green light and began making a left turn. A driver coming from the opposite direction did not realize the stoplight was obscured by snow and plowed into Richter’s vehicle, killing her.

“Would the accident have occurred if the lights had been clear? I would be willing to bet not,” Oswego police Detective Rob Sherwood said.
(Full to MSNBC article: here)

You didn’t REALIZE it was OBSCURED BY SNOW!? I mean common sense: you didn’t LOOK AT IT! It’s not the snow’s fault you’re a moron.

This entire article is WTF worthy. You can’t blame a stoplight not working for causing accidents. You STOP, LOOK, THEN GO when you’re clear to. Heaven forbid we all start taking responsibility for our own actions.

And this concludes my premenstrual rant for the day.

Kumo: NOM!

Danica: Oh yeah?!

Danica: I’ll bit your tail!

Kumo: I’ll bite your face!


Danica: YOU’RE GOING DOWN!

Kumo: AND YOU’RE GOING TO FLY!

Danica: Wait, what time is it? Isn’t it naptime?
Kumo: We woke up 15 minutes ago.
Danica: We’re 5 minutes late for naptime!
Kumo: *already snoring*

Danica is really noisy when she plays so Kumo has started making a lot of noise when he plays with her. Ben thinks she sounds like a Tauntaun.

I like having the iPhone around for taking quick vids like this. The quality isn’t nearly as good as the flip but it’s convenient. I just need to start remembering to grab the flip more.

We got Kumo a sister. We’ve wanted to get him a playmate for awhile now and had been looking at puppies and dogs online and decided last Saturday to drive to the Salinas shelter where we got Kumo just to look and see if we could find a puppy. We tried two other dogs first, a 10 month old Mastif and a tiny lab mix puppy. The Mastif was SO CUTE and already as big as Kumo but when we brought him into the pen next to where we had Kumo, he was REALLY aggressively barking and growling at Kumo. Then we tried the puppy which was a COMPLETE SPAZ and spent 10 minutes chewing anything that came within 10 feet of his mouth. And peeing. And barking.

Then we tried Danica and she came in the pen and crawled in between Ben’s legs and put on her cute face. And we were hooked. We introduced her to Kumo and they did pretty well together. There were two moments, one in the pen and one in the room before we left, where she got a bit snippy with Kumo but I think it was just because Kumo was really excited and once he got a little too close to her neutering incision. But the girl has spunk for sure, that was clear right away. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she ends up being the alpha even though we have taken steps like feeding him first, allowing him to walk in front of her and out the doors before her. But I just figure they’ll work it all out eventually.

We weren’t prepared to be bringing a puppy home THAT DAY but we had pretty much everything we needed left over from Kumo anyway. Crates, toys, bowl… all we needed was a NAME. When we adopted Kumo we had to wait four days for him to be microchipped, fixed and the last of his shots and it took the entire four days to come up with his name.

So on the way home we started throwing out names. We knew just from meeting her that it would have to be a strong, sassy female name. Ben threw out Danica right away and I liked it but we didn’t want to jump at the first name.

Me: What about Seven of Nine!
Ben: Well we’d have to call her Seven, not Seven of Nine.
Me: What about Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One.
Ben: *sigh*
Me: What?! I’m just throwing stuff out there!

And then Cassidy’s head exploded from the geek overdose. What can I say, I love my Star Trek.

We ended up going with Danica because it fits our theme. Our cat Hans’ full name is Hans Devise Stuck after the Hans Device, a racing neck brace, and Hans Stuck, a famous German race car driver. Kumo is named after the Kumho brand of racing tires. We dropped the ‘h’ so it would be easier for the kids in his Kindergarten class to spell his name.

So Danica just made sense.

So, blog friends, welcome our newest family member Danica Hirsch:

I’ve lost 15 pounds. I’m not sure exactly where that 15 pounds went. My pants feel a little less painted on in the morning but other than that I’m stumped. Knowing my luck 5 of it came off my feet and the other 10 were just cleaned thoroughly out of my colon. We’ve been eating very “clean”. Whole grains, lean meats and LOTS AND LOTS of fresh veggies and fruit. Over the next few weeks I’m going to feature some of the recipes here because most of them have actually been much tastier than I’d think something good for you should taste. Gone are the days of rice cakes and plain egg whites that’s for sure.

Of course, Ben has less weight to lose overall but has already lost more than me. He’s at 20 pounds lost. It’s totally awesome for him, he’s doing so well. But certainly there is some twisted higher being out there that was drop kicked in the face by a woman at some point and now we’re all paying the consequence by having to do twice as much work to lose the same amount of weight.

We’ve also been hitting the gym pretty regularly. It’s amazing to me how in two months I can do the same workout on the treadmill but my heart rate average has gone down 40 beats per minute. FORTY. BEATS. PER. MINUTE. I thought for sure during that first workout that my heart was going to commit mutiny. He was going to band together with my spleen and gallbladder and find the quickest exit possible. I’m not sure how important a spleen or gallbladder is but I do know that I’d be kinda screwed without my heart.

Today I made an appointment with a personal trainer that I routinely see TRY TO MURDER people at the gym. Tonight a man just WALKED OUT in the middle of his hour. WALKED OUT! Dude is INTENSE. And I’m really really looking forward to it. Also, I’m wondering how hard I’d actually have to hit him to knock him out to run away. Maybe kicking hm would be better. I guess we’ll find out Wednesday.

I’m back. Well, as much as I can be.

Because I needed a change of pace, I decided it was about time to revamp things a little around here and have put up a brand spankin’ new theme. It had been well over a year since I had really done an overhaul to the site and now seemed like as good a time as any. I even went through and made sure that all my subpages are up to date.

So hopefully things can get back to normal around here. I missed you all and am so very thankful for all the support you sent my way. It really means more than you know.

This is a picture from the last day my grandma and I spent together a little over a year ago. It was warm. We went to a garden center and I gave her a tour of my home. We ate dinner together and laughed. I gave her a big hug and told her I loved her.

My mom flew out to be with her yesterday. She got to spend the night holding her hand and talking to her. This morning at 7:03AM she passed away peacefully. My brother and I are flying out to Pennsylvania Saturday to be there for the memorial on Monday.

I kinda need iSpace. Right now the words just aren’t here. I’m just going to take some time to focus on me and on my family and healing my heartbreak.

Till then…

Breakfast @ 6:30AM: I need to work more protein into breakfast. Even if it means getting up earlier to cook something at home. I don’t WANT to do that though. When I start P90x I want to start having a Shakeology before I leave the house or on the way to work. That’s 17 grams of protein, 17 of carbs and only 150 calories! I also forgot flax seed meal AND my vitamin today. DOH!

1/3 cup of Danon Light & Fit Vanilla Yogurt
1/2 Fuji Apple
1/2 cup Puffins Peanut Butter Cereal

Calories: 168
Carbs: 20
Fat: 1
Protein: 4

Snack @ 9:30AM: I forot to take a shot before I ate it! DOH! I’m new to this! I’m sure I’ll start to remember in no time! 🙂

5 Ellie Krieger lemon shrimp
1/4 cup Ellie Krieger Soup cream & Chives Smashed Potatos

Today Cassidy and I spent an hour upstairs in my bathroom playing in my makeup. Her first school dance was tonight. Halloween. She went as Alice Cullen. The good vampire. The strong girl that is smart and funny and cute. The one girl in that entire silly make believe world that I’d actually WANT my daughter to look up to. She doesn’t look up to the brooding, melancholy girl that gets the guy at the end. She wants to be the one that is nice to everybody. That thinks about other people and what they want instead of her own needs.

This is the first time I’ve ever let her wear eyeshadow. And lipstick. And eyeliner. With glitter. We giggled as I curled her hair in just the right way and laughed uncontrollably when she smiled a wide grin into the mirror only to discover that she had red lipstick all over her teeth.

These fleeting little milestones that pass us by so quickly. I guess you could say that tonight she took a big step towards becoming her grown up self. The one that wears red lipstick and dances. With boys.

An hour later I found out that my grandma isn’t going to make it through the night. The grandma that used to let me dress up in her expensive clothes and dance around her fancy house. That drove me across the country just so I could see it. That taught me how to swim. Taught me how not to fall out of a hammock. That paid me a penny per acorn that I picked up off her driveway. The woman that wore the pants. That taught me that you are never too old to learn and it’s never too hard to try.

I love you, grandma. Forever.

Today I:

• Got up
• Went downstairs to spend cuddle time with Ben. He’s having to sleep downstairs on the futon because his back can’t take the soft bed (he has a herniated disk that’s healing) and my princess skeletal system can’t take the hard futon. It both sucks HORRIBLY and rocks HARDCORE at the same time because I get the whole memory foamed, pillow topped, California kind bed ALL TO MYSELF… but I have the bed all to myself. I miss cuddles. And waking up and listening to him breathe. And kisses in the morning. And his warm body.
• Did my first TurboJam session.
• Thought I was GOING TO FUCKING DIE.
• Drank some of the Shakeology sample that Julie sent me and LIKED IT.
• Showered. TurboJam makes you SMELLY.
• Shopped at Nob Hill. They have AWESOME produce.
• Tried to get Ben’s prescription at CVS. Failed.
• Shopped at Safeway to get all of the stuff that was way overpriced at Nob Hill. By the way, I FINALLY found where they hide the Tahini at Safeway: with the peanut butter!
• Spent 45 minutes putting all the groceries away. Seriously, we filled up the M3 TO THE TOP. We should have taken the truck.
• Made some turkey and provolone sandwiched for lunch. NOM!
• Went to Home Depot to pick up some topsoil to fill in the area in the front yard that used to have ugly rocks that I decided HAD TO BE DEALT WITH when I was mowing the lawn yesterday (the ones in between the yard and sidewalk here). I just couldn’t take them anymore.
• Changed into my yard work clothes.
• Filled in the area with top soil.
• Changed back into clothes that are appropriate for public wear.
• Went to Target to buy a scale and a heart rate monitor/calorie counter.
• Went to PetSmart and bought 100 pounds of various food products for the zoo and tried to buy a dog door for the sliding glass doors but they all go to 81 inches and our door is 94.5 inches.
• Came home and put all 100 pounds of food into the containers.
• Started turkey chili.
• Started laundry.
• Cleaned our bedroom.
• DIED!

I wanted to talk about TurboJam and how it completely kicked my ass in a really good way but I’m so exhausted I just want to curl up and cry while watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It gets me EVER WEEK.

I’m also going to eat a sugar free popsicle.

Then I’m going to SLEEP.

YAY!

TurboJam really is awesome though and I’ll get into all of my new motivation and drive to get health tomorrow. Julie has totally motivated me to get my ass into shape. Julie, can I link your new site yet? Because seriously?! MOTIVATED ME!

Till tomorrow!